from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Etymologies

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

1960's, US, colloquial, expressive coinage, with influence from scum, fuzzy, lousy, sleazy. First attested use is in reference to Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969). (Wiktionary)

Examples

When I am eating on my own dime which, as a greedy man, I do an awful lot, I am far more likely to be drawn to the sort of joint that obsessive compulsives would call scuzzy and I would call characterful. glowing review to a dirt-cheap Szechuan restaurant which did marvellous things with piles of rustling dried chillies, salt and peppercorns.